Don't worry! I'm not leaving the beach for Baltimore. Hah! What were you thinking?

Just going back to my hometown for a little visit. I haven't been in Maryland (or pretty much anywhere but Hawaii) since my move here in February of 2010! I'm a little overdue.

My best friend just got married so I'm excited to attend her Halloween-style reception this weekend. Since Halloween is arguably my favorite holiday and I live for costumes, needless to say, I'm psyched.

I have been planning my Halloween costume for about 3 months now. Pictures will come soon!

I'll also be attending a Baltimore Ravens home game. Dear Lord, I'm so happy. I think I'd be thrilled just to have the game occur later than 8am but to be present at the game, beer and all? Literally, heaven. Purple heaven.

Living life as #bikinigirl and LOVING it.

Will also post soon about Hawaii Five-0 activities. I'm alive and well on set as Bikini Girl. I've (lucky and fortunate enough to have) been an extra in several episodes in season 2 and hope to appear in several more.

Happy One Year Anniversary, Hawaii! I moved to Hawaii with Nick on February 4, 2010. Which means next week I will have now lived in Hawaii for a whole year.

First license in a new state! Woot!

So crazy to think about. Not that the time during deployment flew by at all, but definitely the time since Nick has been home has.

The only time I have left Hawaii since moving here has been for a few days to go to California for training for work. I haven't been back to Maryland and have not seen my family and friends for one whole year now.

My going away outing with my good friends before the big move.

That must be the reason I have been thinking about them all and missing them so much. I did get to see my sister and niece back in July when they came to visit me, which was amazing. And I have gotten to Skype with my parents, my sister, my niece, and even my grandma over the holidays.

But my heart is aching for my friends back home. Don't get me wrong, I have friends here. But they're not the kind yet that I feel comfortable calling up after a rough day to talk to. Nick is here for that...some of the time. And none of the girls I hang out with live anywhere nearby me. With the island’s traffic, that is a big deal. A girl needs her best friends.

To my two best friends back home, Erin and Rachel. I miss you two SO much.

Erin has been my best friend and partner in crime and sarcasm since junior year of college when I went from commuting to class to moving onto campus and got "stuck" rooming with her. It was a randomized assignment and the first thing I see when I walk into the dorm room is a huge poster of David Duchovny from X-Files and a little David Duchovny action figure perched tauntingly by her computer.

Me and Erin...So young here!

Erin and I hit it off right away, much to her surprise (and a little bit of mine!). She told me story after story of her nightmarish roommates, ones that stalked her, ones that walked in on her without asking, and ones that would just stare at her like they wanted to kill her. Erin and I had the same major, were the same age, and were in very similar dating situations at the time. While I had never seen X-Files before (although Erin got me to watch a few episodes while living with her and they weren’t bad, I must say), we did stay up WAY too late when we had early classes and tell scary stories until we fell asleep.

Erin and I continued to room together until graduation. Afterwards we had our own stuff going on and didn’t see each other much. A few months after graduation we got together for a reunion and decided to go do karaoke at a little bar nearby our college where a friend of mine (Rob!) was DJing. And then we went faithfully every week for 5 months straight.

Still my favorite picture of all time. Oh my Lord.

Erin has and always will be my best friend. I regret that we don’t talk much. She is a busy girl with a full-time job with a hefty commute, a fiancé, and a punk band called Dead End Lane in which she is the amazingly talented lead singer. The time diff doesn’t help either. But despite not getting to talk much I know that if I need her she is always there and vice versa.

Rachel!

I also found Rachel, my other best friend, in a very serendipitous type way. I used to date her brother! While the relationship with her brother clearly did not work out, I was fortunate enough to meet Rachel who is like a kindred soul to me. We got along SO well that her brother started getting jealous of our talking the whole time we were all out! Not too long after meeting Rachel, she invited me to move into her spare bedroom at her place.

Such an awesome friend.

Rachel was such an awesome roommate too! We watched the same shows, worked nearby, loved a lot of the same things. It was only a little awkward having pictures of her brother hanging around everywhere…but this is also the same brother that led me to find my husband so it looks like two AWESOME things came out of that!

ignore the brunette behind the curtain.

I guess Nick has to come out as the winner of being my favorite roommate ever. I mean, we do have a blast together. But….my two favorite girl roommates and best friends will always be Erin and Rachel.

There are no two friends like these two. :)

So this blog is dedicated to Erin and Rachel. Of course I miss everyone else back home SO much, my mom and my sister especially.

I also really miss my other close friends: Rob, John, EP, James, Cory, Beki, Bernadette, and all my other friends I didn't name on here….you all are the best. I miss you guys a ton. Karaoke again soon please? Guys?

Miss you guys a ton. Sing 'Fatbottom Girls' for me please?

Side Note: I know Erin wouldn’t want you to believe she is still obsessed with David Duchovny. I mean I wouldn’t want to embarrass her. It’s not like I would ever do something crazy like put up a poster of her with a really bad picture in the elevator of our dormitory or anything like that. So for the record, despite owning a cast of David Duchovny’s head, Erin really isn’t obsessed with X-Files anymore. For the record. ;)

The ironic thing is I finally sat down to update my blog yesterday after a few CRAZY long days in a row of moving and I entitled the blog Murphy. It was supposed to be about how Murphy's Law really took effect with our move. Twenty five minutes into typing my computer shut down to update and kicked me out of Firefox causing me to lose everything I'd just typed....Murphy's Law?

So last week was crazy. On top of the movers coming and everything being hectic with having them there packing, trying to separate everything we need for the next three months before we move to Hawaii, I also worked pretty full days on Monday, Tuesday, and even Wednesday, the day we actually left Charleston.

I ended up not having any problems with the movers only taking certain stuff. In fact, as I look for things I am realizing I forgot to put aside some things I really wanted to...like that pair of snow boots I bought last year that I have only worn twice and was looking forward to wearing here over the next three months. I'm sure they'll get tons of use in Hawaii. On an island. Haha.

Back to moving day. Wednesday we slept on the floor on a sleeping bag in the living room. At 4am I woke up because I heard Maggie making gulping noises. Sure enough I got up and turned the light on in time to see her vomiting on the carpet. I managed to get her over to the hardwood floor before she went again. Then she calmed down a little bit. At 4:45 and 5;15 she started getting sick again.

We already had our alarms set to go off at 5am. I never went back to sleep when Maggie started getting sick. On top of that, I woke up at 1am earlier and couldn't get back to sleep for an hour. So I basically got up at 3am that day. And went like 26 hours without sleep. Sooooo fun.

Maggie kept getting sick all day. I wasn't planning on feeding her or giving her water anyway to help keep her from getting sick in the car. Throughout the day Nick barricaded poor Maggie in the kitchen (on a clean-upable hard wood floor as opposed to the carpet which we were steam vacuuming so it could be inspected that day).

We left at 5:30ish pm to get on our way to Baltimore. I thought it was going to be more dramatic driving over the bridge one last time and seeing everything a last time- instead I was too distracted worrying about Maggie. She got sick again not even two minutes into the drive. Thank goodness I put down a shower curtain, her seat cover, and three towels on top of that JUST to make sure. Thank goodness.

Basically it was a pretty miserable and long trip. Maggie was just miserable. Even with Benadryl to calm her down. The last two hours I had the light on in the car watching her and she was gulping down trying not to be sick and almost falling over nodding off.

We got into Baltimore and arrived at my mom's house at 4:30am and didn't get to sleep until 5:30/6am. Maggie was sooo happy when I let her into the yard. Immediately her tail and ears went up. After being sick for 24 hours she wasn't sick anymore.

Today's Sunday so I've been in Baltimore since essentially Thursday morning. I got to have dinner and do pumpkin carving (my first time!) with my sister and her family and with Nick on Thursday night- after basically sleeping until 5pm. Friday we had dinner with my parents. Saturday for Halloween we dressed up as Bill and Sookie from True Blood and went downtown to Fells Point to see all the costumes. This morning Nick left for Connecticut.

Definitely a lot harder to say goodbye to him today after a year of living together than it ever was last year when he was stationed in Panama City and I didn't see him for nearly 3 months. I can't even imagine what April will be like when gets deployed for 6 months.

The nice thing is I will definitely see Nick for Thanksgiving weekend. Since it's only about a 5 hour trip (hopefully with not too much traffic) he will be coming down for that weekend to spend it with my family. We had such an awesome Thanksgiving together last year. Neither of us went home so we did our own little Thanksgiving with turkey, biscuits, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc. I made everything and we just hung out in sweat pants and made cocktails, ate, and watched 80's movies all day- I specifically remember Little Monsters with Fred Savage and Ben Savage. It sucks not to be able to have our own Thanksgiving again this year, but then again it will be awesome to have him here for our family Thanksgiving since he won't be here for Christmas.

I digress.

As of right now I am unemployed and freaking out a teeny bit.

I started Craigslisting tonight and am going to get up earlyish tomorrow to Craigslist some more, make some lists of local restaurants, and hit as many as possible to apply. Hopefully I won't have to resort to a restaurant that's too far away from home. I'm just crossing my fingers that I can find something quickly. I guess if I don't find something by the end of this week I'll just go to the downtown Hooters and try to work there again. Guess we'll see.

The nice thing will be not having a schedule this week- I'll get to meet up with some people I haven't seen in a while. So excited to see my best friend Erin tomorrow night for the first time in six months! And hopefully a bunch more people soon too.

Alright- up early tomorrow to job hunt....and try to figure out which clothes I have and which ones I forgot and actually somewhat organize the room I'm staying in at my parents. Ahhh, crossing fingers for that job.

This week has been awesome. We had the concert this past weekend in VA beach and since this is Nick's last week of work here, he has been getting off super early every day. I was off work today and Nick was out by 10 so we had a great day together. Got to go the dogpark with Maggie and have pretty much been watching TV, napping, or eating while watching TV all evening. The epitome of laziness. Love it. I even got him to watch an episode of Glee with me and he didn't mind it. Hahh.

The vet called Monday to let me know Maggie passed her blood test. So now I just have to book a flight to Hawaii. Nick doesn't have his flight yet since the Navy schedules it and I guess tells him sometime right before. Ahhhh Navy and your planning. We have a wedding to go to on Jan 30th in Maryland and he has to report for duty by Feb 10th. I would like him to be there before me...especially since I won't have a car when I get there and all. So I guess I'm going to shoot for as close to Feb 10th as possible. I would like to be there by Valentines Day though.

Maryland is coming up rapidly. I'm trying to plan in all my last minute Charleston stuff now. I emailed the girls I hung out with on Army Wives so I hope to get together with them sometime soon before I leave. I also really want to have a going away thing at bar around here. Nothing big. Just a time to come out and have drinks- probably the Sunday before we leave so I can see everyone and hang out a last time.

I'm so excited to be coming back to Baltimore for Halloween. I LOVE Halloween. My parents used to be uber religious when I was little..my dad mainly. I wasn't allowed to dress up for Halloween because my dad considered it the devil's holiday. I think I dressed up once when I was 4 or 5 and walked around a mall. But when my parents got divorced when I was about 12 I started dressing up every year. Not actually trick or treating, but dressing up to hand out candy. And of course when you hit college age, you realize Halloween is the best time to dress up and bar hop. Gradually I have been going to more and more things each year and of course I have to do a different costume every time. Last year I had I think four different costumes, the year before was five. I may only have one this year but I'm pretty happy with it. I won't tell you what it is yet though...I always try to keep it on the down low. Last year was my favorite costume so far.

On actual Halloween night in Baltimore last year (the week before I moved to Charleston) I went to Fells Point. Fells is an area downtown which is basically a huge court with lots of bars all along the street. They close it off to cars for Halloween and everyone you know ends up coming and bar hopping. There's even a costume contest in the middle of the square. Last year I went as the original Blonde at the Beach- Pam Anderson from Baywatch. I bought a red bathing suit and found an actual movie set Baywatch patch to iron onto my suit. I did my makeup like Pam. I wore blonde hair extensions. I cut apart two Tide bottles and taped and spraypainted them together to form a life raft. And I ran in slow motion for 3 1/2 hours. It was such a blast. I felt like a celebrity because people kept asking to get their pictures taken with me. I ended up being on the local newspaper's website and even made it onto Youtube (See below).

I don't think my costume this year will be nearly as amazing. Plus I will probably only have that night to dress up since we'll be packing and moving and cleaning all week. But I'm really excited because it's my first Halloween with Nick. Last year he was already in Charleston and came back the next weekend to come get me and help me move down with him. We met the year before in December so we missed Halloween.

Since he has to go to Connecticut he is going to leave with me and follow me up to Baltimore the day before Halloween. So he is going to be with me on Halloween and leave the next day to continue his trip to Connecticut. Not only are we going to be together on Halloween but we're also going to do a couples costume. I've never done that before! Super excited.

I will definitely keep you posted. I'm looking forward to spending this month with Nick (he will be on leave starting next week) before I have to go without him for 3 months while he is in Connecticut. :( Then Hawaii is right around the corner! It'll be sneaking up before you know it. Geez, wonder what they do for Halloween in Hawaii.